Garage Rockers Together Pangea Talk Touring Sober, Making Best-Known Album Ahead of Grog Shop Show

Together Pangea doesn’t tour for as long as it used to, and for bassist Danny Bengston, that’s OK.

“Doing it less, I’m more stoked to go on tour than I was in, like, 2017, 18, 19 when we were just sort of doing it all the fucking time. It becomes something you regret,” Bengston said. “Now, it’s something I look forward to a lot more, I think, because it’s the less-is-more thing. And I think we also play better and our moods are better when we’re not gone for months at a time.”

The Los Angeles garage rockers, who perform Aug. 13 with Liily and The Rosies at Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights, are touring behind an upcoming 10th-anniversary vinyl reissue of their well-known album, “Badillac.” When Scene caught up with Bengston and guitarist/vocalist William Keegan on July 30, the latter was preparing to drive a van from Los Angeles to Boston to begin the three-week tour in earnest. He said he was excited for the journey.

“I’ll probably do an audio book but I haven’t decided which one yet,” he said.
During a half-hour chat, the band members talked about the upcoming tour, the making of “Badillac” and how touring sober has its perks.

The following interview is condensed for length and clarity.

Are you guys doing “Badillac” in full every night?
Keegan: We’re going to play all the songs off the record. We did our first show a few days ago in San Diego and we’re still kind of working out the order of things. But we basically played the whole record and then played a bunch of other stuff afterwards.

Why’d you want to revisit this?
Keegan: I think it’s our most popular record. It’s at least the most streamed. We sold out of the actual physical record in maybe 2018 or 2019 or something. So we went on a bunch of tours where, at the merch table, people were asking us for the record and we just didn’t have it. So we thought, at the 10 year (mark), we might as well repress it and then do something around the repress. And that was kind of it.
For a lot of fans of the record, I don’t think it’s 10 years old to them. I feel like a lot of people have heard it just in the last few years, even since the pandemic.

What do you remember about making “Badillac”?
Bengston: It was a crazy time. Our friend Andrew Schubert worked at a very famous mixing studio in Los Angeles, which used to be Can Am Studios, And (mixing engineer) Chris (Lord-Alge) would allow him to use the studio space in the off hours, as long as everything was clean and back to neutral for the 9 to 5 regular operating hours of that business. So we would go in, usually at like 9, 10 pm, and record until about 3 or 4 in the morning. We did that over the course of two years and that’s how “Badillac” happened.

My biggest memory is us being in that studio very late at night, coming home in the morning, the sun’s coming up, and having a burned CD of whatever we just did, and listening to it as the sun’s out. It was a fun time.

I’ve worked that late and it’s kind of isolating. I don’t know how you did it for that long.

Bengston: Substances were a bigger part of our lives at that point. We were also quite young. We were in our early 20s. and, you know, alcohol and other creative substances played a part in us being able to do that.

What are you looking forward to on this tour?
Keegan: I think, since the lockdowns or whatever, and since getting back on the road, I think I just appreciate playing for people and being in the room with people and that connection. Those songs are a big part of our lives but they’re also a big part of the lives of the people who came. It reminds them of moments in their own lives. Feeling that energy and having people sing the songs back at you, it’s really cool. There’s nothing else like it. So I’m just excited to play.

Bengston: I love touring in the summer. Especially when you go to places like the Midwest. I think people are generally in some of the better moods during that time of year.

When we were touring around “Badillac,” we were touring a lot differently. I remember it was really difficult. We were in the middle of our first major label album cycle, and there’s a lot of PR, and we were barely holding it together. We didn’t have a real tour manager. We were young, we were just fucking getting hammered every night and sleeping in way too late and barely making shows.

Now, it’s much different and we get up early. We go to bed early, as early as we can. And we have more time to enjoy cities. Summertime is the most fun time to tour because of that.

Keegan: Danny and I don’t drink anymore. It’s different touring sober. It’s a lot easier and you remember everything. And that’s pretty fun.

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